


Battle Tactics

by glorious_clio



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Gen, Movie: Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, Spoilers, leia introspection, so many spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-24
Updated: 2019-12-24
Packaged: 2021-02-26 02:14:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 620
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21935779
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glorious_clio/pseuds/glorious_clio
Summary: Even this summary is a spoiler! Suffice to say that after Luke's death, Leia Organa takes young Rey under her wing. Please go see The Rise of Skywalker.
Comments: 6
Kudos: 24





	Battle Tactics

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to mrstater for giving this a once over and telling me it was good. I wasn't sure if I was going to post this little ficlet or not.

“Nothing’s impossible. I’m going to run the training course again.” 

She’s not the Galaxy’s greatest Jedi Master, but Leia Organa refuses to believe she’s the worst. 

Leia reaches out, feeling the beats Rey hits as she runs, dodges, attacks, balances. She fights her way through the jungle. 

“She’s better at this than I was,” Leia whispers. 

“You had other strengths,” Luke assures her. Leia won’t dignify that with a response. She doesn’t see him, not like on Crait, but he’s with her all the time, now. Now that her time grows short. 

“I’m training her,” Leia concedes. “There’s so much good in her, it’s like....” She struggles to articulate it. A memory of her Aunt Deara’s kinetic sculptures arrives in her mind’s eye. 

Luke laughs. “To me, she looks like water.”

“That’s because you grew up with a shortage.” 

Even though she can’t see her twin, she senses him, shrugging. 

“Not my fault,” he says. 

No, she thinks. It’s the will of the Force. 

Leia relaxes, just a bit. The plants around her reminder of D’Qar, or Yavin IV, but the mood is more like Endor, on the cusp of something big. It doesn’t help that the shield generator was a small moon, like this place. And moons still remind Leia of her mother. She shakes the thought away. 

Chewie, Finn, and Poe should be back soon. Rose is Leia’s right hand, now. A thousand bases were in Leia’s past, or so it felt. She had to pass these skills on, too. Leadership was a many-headed creature. Finn, Poe, Rey, Rose - it would take all four of them. 

(It had always been the  _ alliance _ that made the Rebels victorious.) 

“What of Finn?” Luke asks her, breaking her train of thought.   


“His power is more like mine,” Leia says. “Rey should train him.”

“I agree.”

“You’re not really in a position to do much more,” she says. 

They fall silent again. They both feel it then, a surge, Rey feeling something through the Force. Not her future, necessarily. A path, or a warning. 

Leia continues, “She won’t fall. Bloodlines only mean so much.”

Luke says nothing to this, he doesn’t have to.

He has told her of how quickly Rey was called by the dark side. But Leia is sure that learning the truth of her lineage will make her stronger. Neither she nor Luke fell. Finn turned away from his stormtrooper training. Carbon, under pressure, becomes kyber. 

It worked the other way, too, Leia knew. Ben, her sweet baby. She used to wrap him against her chest and bring him to meetings or onto the Senate floor. Not as a statement or a symbol (though she was accused of this). He was simply her whole heart, and couldn’t bear to be without him for long. 

“You’re tired,” Luke said. “You should rest.”

“And I will,” she promised. “Not just yet.”

She feels him step away- not far, but no longer quite so present. 

Maz had joined them here on Ajan Kloss, and between her and Luke, she was sure that they expected her to drop dead at any moment. But as far as Leia knew, her saber was still on the island. The story wasn’t quite done. 

“Not yet,” said the Force.

It was shifting around her. Something was changing, Rey was struggling. Poe, Finn and Chewie were rushing back to her side.

“No, not just yet.” Leia turned on her heel and made her way back to the Command Center, to find Rose Tico. 

“Be with me,” she said, repeating Rey’s mantra from earlier. Thinking of her rebels, her resistance, of Mon Mothma, of Han and Luke, of Bail and Breha. “Once more.”

She has a battle to win. 


End file.
